Weekly Science Headlines

[Kai]

March 13, 2009

Second Genesis: Life, but Not as We Know It
from New Scientist

When the Nobel prizewinning physicist Richard Feynman died in 1988, his blackboard carried the inscription, "What I cannot create, I do not understand." By that measure, biologists still have a lot to learn, because no one has yet succeeded in turning a chemical soup into a living, reproducing, evolving life form. We're still stuck with Life 1.0, the stuff that first quickened at least 3.5 billion years ago. There's been nothing new under the sun since then, as far as we know.

That looks likely to change. Around the world, several labs are drawing close to the threshold of a second genesis, an achievement that some would call one of the most profound scientific breakthroughs of all time. David Deamer, a biochemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been saying that scientists would create synthetic life in "five or 10 years" for three decades, but finally he might actually be right. "The momentum is building," he says. "We're knocking at the door."

Meanwhile, a no-less profound search is on for a "shadow biosphere"--life forms that are unrelated to the life we know because they are descendants of an independent origin of life.

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Low-Level Ozone Exposure Found to be Lethal over Time
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

Ozone pollution is a killer, increasing the yearly risk of death from respiratory diseases by 40% to 50% in heavily polluted cities like Los Angeles and Riverside and by about 25% throughout the rest of the country, researchers reported today.

Environmental scientists already knew that increases in ozone during periods of heavy pollution caused short-term effects, such as asthma attacks, increased hospitalizations and deaths from heart attacks.

But the 18-year study of nearly half a million people, reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first to show that long-term, low-level exposure to the pollutant can also be lethal.

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MIT Scientists Charged Up
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

MIT scientists have developed a battery technology that might one day allow people to charge their cellphones in 10 seconds or a drained plug-in car battery in mere minutes--reshaping the way such gadgets are integrated into our lives.

Scientists tweaked a lithium-ion battery by, in essence, creating access to the equivalent of on-ramps so that ions can easily enter an energy highway within the material. The advance allows the batteries to charge in seconds and discharge about 100 times faster than current lithium-ion batteries, according to Gerbrand Ceder, a materials science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who led the work published in the journal Nature.

"If we made a cellphone battery that could charge in 30 seconds, I think people would change their lifestyles. ... You might settle for a smaller battery, and you could almost stand by and sip your coffee and it's done," Ceder said. "That becomes a behavior modifier, and that's why I'm excited about it."

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Pluto a Planet Again--On Friday the 13th, in Illinois
from National Geographic News

It took about three minutes for members of the Illinois state senate to make the unanimous vote: "that March 13, 2009, be declared 'Pluto Day' in the State of Illinois in honor of the date its discovery was announced in 1930."

Quietly adopted on February 26, the state resolution is meant to honor Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, who was born and raised in the farming village of Streator.

"This is one of those things that the village is very proud of," said Illinois State Senator Gary Dahl, who sponsored the resolution. "I don't think we are changing the status of the planet. We're simply asking that March 13 be declared Pluto Day and that, for the day, Pluto is a planet."

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Metamaterial Revolution: The New Science of Making Anything Disappear
from Discover

Xiang Zhang remembers the day he recognized that something extraordinary was happening around him. It was in 2000, at a workshop organized by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to explore a tantalizing idea: that radical new kinds of engineered materials might enable us to extend our control over matter in seemingly magical ways.

The goal at hand, changing how objects interact with light, seemed at first blush to be routine; people had been manipulating visible light with mirrors and lenses and prisms nearly forever. But Zhang, a materials scientist then at the University of California at Los Angeles, knew those applications were limited. Based overwhelmingly on a single material, glass, the technologies were restricted by the laws of optics described in standard physics texts.

The engineers in the room hoped to smash through those barriers with materials and technologies never conceived of before. The proposals included crafting what amounts to an array of billions of tiny relays; in essence, the relays would capture light and send it back out. Depending on the specific design of the array, the light would be bent, reflected, or skewed in different ways. What could you do with a tool like that? An amazing amount, Zhang soon discovered.

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Arctic Diary: Explorers' Ice Quest
from BBC News Online

A team of polar explorers has travelled to the Arctic in a bid to discover how quickly the sea-ice is melting and how long it might take for the ocean to become ice-free in summers.

Pen Hadow, Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley will be using a mobile radar unit to record an accurate measurement of ice thickness as they trek to the North Pole.

The trio will be sending in regular diary entries, videos and photographs to BBC News throughout their expedition. The Catlin Arctic Survey team started its gruelling trek on 28 February.

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Planning for Future Must Consider Climate Change
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--Despite years of study and analysis, the world is unprepared for climate change and needs to rethink basic assumptions that govern things as varied as choosing cars and building bridges, the National Research Council reports.


Current building, land use and planning practices assume a continuation of climate as it has been known in the past. "That assumption, fundamental to the ways people and organizations make their choices, is no longer valid," the Council, the working arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a report released Thursday.

... Government agencies need to step up their efforts to provide guidance to decision makers, including the establishment of a national climate service, the report said. The report said the national climate service should be linked closely to research. It noted there has been discussion of such an agency within, or led by, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is the parent of the National Weather Service.

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New Battle Lines on Stem Cells
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

ATLANTA--Faced with a new federal policy that opens the door for more embryonic stem cell research, conservatives have geared up for a political battle at the national and state level that goes to the core of their beliefs about the sanctity of human life.

Since President Barack Obama lifted the eight-year ban on nearly all federal funding for stem cell research on Monday, conservative leaders said they have stepped up efforts to lobby Congress to preserve some restrictions. They plan to launch a far-reaching campaign to educate the public about the threat to life as well as research alternatives that are not as invasive.

"This executive order is just the beginning of the process. Our concern is how broad this will be interpreted, and will there be limitations," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative think-tank. "With limited tax dollars available, we should not use those funds for research that is at best morally questionable."

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Reading the Patterns of Spatial Memories
from Science News

Harry Potter had it easy: All he had to do to see another wizard's memories was peer into that wizard's swirling pensieve. Mind-reading is not so simple for everybody else. But a new study reveals that even those without magical gadgets may one day "see" someone else's memories.

In the study, which appears online March 12 in Current Biology, researchers used patterns of brain activity to accurately predict where someone was standing in a virtual room.

Each of four study participants sat down to a computer and toured a large virtual room. The room contained objects that helped volunteers get oriented, including clocks, chairs and pictures. As participants navigated through the virtual space, brain cells preserved the memory of the route taken to the final location ("turn left at the picture of the boat").

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Has the US Patent System Gone Too Far?
from the Christian Science Monitor

When Samuel Hopkins came up with a method for improving the production of potash, it was probably just the kind of invention that President George Washington had in mind when he created the US patent system. Hopkins, who in 1790 received the first American patent ever issued, had discovered a way to increase the production of a critical resource used to make glass, soap, and soil fertilizer.

It's unclear, however, how Washington would feel about America's 6,368,227th patent. Issued to Steven Olson, it protects a "method of swinging on a swing ... in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other."

To critics of the current US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), this kind of patent demonstrates everything that's wrong with the patent system today.

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[Kai]

March 18, 2009



Aligning Medical Treatment with God's Plan
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

... In a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that terminally ill cancer patients were nearly three times more likely to go on breathing machines or receive other invasive treatments if religion was an important part of their decision-making process. Such treatments didn't improve a person's long-term chances, however.

"There's a sense that by not going for life-prolonging care, they're letting God down," said Holly Prigerson ... the study's senior author. "But the more aggressive care you get, the worse your quality of life in that last week."

Other recent studies have made similar connections. Religious cancer patients who had unsuccessful chemotherapy treatments were twice as likely to want heroic end-of-life measures, according to a report last year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

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"Teen" Dinosaurs Roamed in Herds, Mass Grave Suggests
from National Geographic News

Like teenagers at the mall, young dinosaurs may have wandered in herds--fending for themselves while adults were busy nesting, according to a new report on one of the world's best preserved fossil sites.

About 90 million years ago a herd of more than 25 birdlike dinosaurs got stuck in the mud at the edge of a drying lake and perished together in modern-day China, said study co-leader Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist.

Nearly complete skeletons of the plant-eaters were found at the Gobi desert site--some stacked on top of each other. The dig site is etched with an ancient tragedy, said Sereno, who is also a National Geographic explorer-in-residence. Plunge and scratch marks are preserved in the long-hardened mud, showing the young dinosaurs' futile attempts at escape.

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Commentary: Nobody Listens to the Real Climate Change Experts
from the Telegraph (UK)

Considering how the fear of global warming is inspiring the world's politicians to put forward the most costly and economically damaging package of measures ever imposed on mankind, it is obviously important that we can trust the basis on which all this is being proposed.

Last week two international conferences addressed this issue and the contrast between them could not have been starker.

The first in Copenhagen, billed as "an emergency summit on climate change" and attracting acres of worldwide media coverage, was explicitly designed to stoke up the fear of global warming to an unprecedented pitch. As one of the organisers put it, "this is not a regular scientific conference: this is a deliberate attempt to influence policy."

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More Evidence Links Diabetes to Alzheimer's Risk
from USA Today

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--You've heard that diabetes hurts your heart, your eyes, your kidneys. New research indicates a more ominous link: That diabetes increases the risk of getting Alzheimer's disease and may speed dementia once it strikes.

Doctors long suspected diabetes damaged blood vessels that supply the brain. It now seems even more insidious, that the damage may start before someone is diagnosed with full-blown diabetes, back when the body is gradually losing its ability to regulate blood sugar.

In fact, the lines are blurring between what specialists call "vascular dementia" and scarier classic Alzheimer's disease. Whatever it's labeled, there's reason enough to safeguard your brain by fighting diabetes and heart-related risks.

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Wondrous Targets in the Search for Alien Life
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

Astronomers and would-be space pioneers have long mooned over the possibility that life exists on Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest satellite, or Titan, Saturn's biggest moon.

With each bit of new information, the odds seem to improve. Europa contains a vast subsurface ocean of liquid water, a potential home for life as we know it. Titan looks a lot like Earth, only with a different chemistry set. Life there, if it exists, might be as we don't know it.

For years, NASA scientists and others planned and panned, pumped and dumped various proposed missions to Titan and Europa. Last month, they made a decision, opting for a 2020 launch to Europa, with arrival at the Jupiter system anticipated in late 2025. ... A mission to Titan, NASA officials said, was technically too difficult, but one might follow if the Europa mission is a success.

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An Outbreak of Autism, or a Statistical Fluke?
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

MINNEAPOLIS--Ayub Abdi is a cute 5-year-old with a smile that might be called shy if not for the empty look in his eyes. He does not speak. When he was 2, he could say "Dad," "Mom," "give me" and "need water," but he has lost all that.

... As he is strapped into his seat in the bus that takes him to special education class, it is hard not to notice that there is only one other child inside, and he too is a son of Somali immigrants. "I know 10 guys whose kids have autism," said Ayub's father, Abdirisak Jama, a 39-year-old security guard. "They are all looking for help."

Autism is terrifying the community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, and some pediatricians and educators have joined parents in raising the alarm. But public health experts say it is hard to tell whether the apparent surge of cases is an actual outbreak, with a cause that can be addressed, or just a statistical fluke.

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Green Beer for Fewer Greenbacks
from Scientific American

You have probably heard of green buildings, green cars and, perhaps, even green phones. But were you aware that green beer is flowing from the taps of some U.S. breweries, and not the kind for St. Patrick's Day?

Among the leaders of the movement is Lucky Labrador Brewing Company in Portland, Ore., which for the past year has been saving big bucks by using solar energy to heat water used in the brewing process.

Lucky Labrador's first green beer, "Solar Flare Ale," was an instant sensation when it was introduced in February 2008, according to brewery co-owner Gary Geist. Sales spiked in the month following the beer's debut, Geist says. But, he notes that going solar is more about long-term benefits than about temporary sales spurts.

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'Consciousness Signature' Discovered Spanning the Brain
from New Scientist

Electrodes implanted in the brains of people with epilepsy might have resolved an ancient question about consciousness.

Signals from the electrodes seem to show that consciousness arises from the coordinated activity of the entire brain. The signals also take us closer to finding an objective "consciousness signature" that could be used to probe the process in animals and people with brain damage without inserting electrodes.

Previously it wasn't clear whether a dedicated brain area, or "seat of consciousness", was responsible for guiding our subjective view of the world, or whether consciousness was the result of concerted activity across the whole brain.

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From Arctic Soil, Fossils of a Goliath That Ruled the Jurassic Seas
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

There were monstrous reptiles in the deep, back in the time of dinosaurs.

They swam with mighty flippers, two fore and two hind, all four accelerating on attack. In their elongated heads were bone-crushing jaws more powerful than a Tyrannosaurus rex's. They were the pliosaurs, heavyweight predators at the top of the food chain in ancient seas.

Much of this was already known. Now, after an analysis of fossils uncovered on a Norwegian island 800 miles from the North Pole, scientists have confirmed that they have found two partial skeletons of a gigantic new species, possibly a new family, of pliosaurs. This extinct marine reptile was at least 50 feet long and weighed 45 tons, the largest known of its kind.

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Scientists Gain in Struggle Against Wheat Rust
from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Registration Required)

MEXICO CITY (Associated Press)--Researchers are deploying new wheat varieties with an array of resistant genes they hope will baffle and defeat Ug99, a highly dangerous fungus leapfrogging through wheat fields in Africa and Asia.

"Significant progress has been made," plant geneticist Ravi Singh and collaborators said in a paper presented Tuesday to leading international wheat experts at a four-day conference on combating the re-emerged, mutant form of stem rust, an old plant disease.

Scientists still spoke of a potential agricultural disaster. "A global food crisis is still a distinct possibility if governments and international institutions fail to support this rescue mission," Norman Borlaug, 94, the Nobel Prize-winning American agronomist, said in a statement.

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[Kai]

March 12, 2009



DNA Testing Ends Mystery Surrounding Czar Nicholas II Children
from the Los Angeles Times (Registration Required)

The most enduring and romantic legend of the Russian Revolution--that two children of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, survived the slaughter that killed the rest of their family--may finally be put to rest with the positive identification of bone fragments from a lonely Russian grave.

The czar and his family were gunned down and stabbed by members of the Red Guard early on the morning of July 17, 1918, but rumors have persisted that two of the children, the Grand Duchess Anastasia and her brother Alexei, survived ...

Those hopes were bolstered with the 1991 revelation that nine bodies of Romanov family members and servants had been found in a Yekaterinberg grave, but that a son and daughter were still missing. Now, newly analyzed DNA evidence from a second, nearby grave discovered in 2007 proves that the bones are those of two Romanov children, ending the mystery once and for all. A report on the analysis was published online Tuesday in the journal PLoS ONE.

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No Skepticism on the Energy Gap
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

On Tuesday, the final day of the Heartland Institute's conference examining whether global warming was ever a crisis, there was a fascinating moment in one session when the discussion shifted from questioning warming to assessing humanity's limited energy choices.

Climate debate aside, there appeared to be no skepticism at all about the need for an ambitious energy quest and burst of technological innovation--basically in line with the "second industrial revolution" called for by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who was a target at other sessions for recent statements on climate risks.

The moment came during a session pairing up Don Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, and Michael Jungbauer, a state senator and water-resources specialist from Minnesota. ... Dr. Easterbrook, in laying out the dangers of cold spells, noted that the world doesn't have sufficient energy sources to get through such a period, particularly with the human population heading toward 9 billion.

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Stimulus Dollars Energize Efforts to Smarten up the Electric Power Grid
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

ERLANGER, Ky.--One gizmo allows you to run the dishwasher when electricity is cheapest. Another decides when to fire up the water heater if you plan on a 6 a.m. shower. Another routes solar energy from a rooftop panel to a battery in your garage and the wiring in your house.

Outside, towers equipped with sensors tell the electric company exactly where a storm has knocked out power. The power grid itself can react to trouble, rerouting juice from a healthy part of the system or isolating itself to prevent a larger meltdown.

So far, this dramatization of "smart grid" technology is confined to an office park in northern Kentucky, but sponsor Duke Energy is one of many large utilities confident they can turn theater into reality for millions of customers, aided by billions of dollars in the federal stimulus package.

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Blood Type Could Matter in Pancreatic Cancer
from Science News

People with type O blood are less likely to develop cancer of the pancreas than are people with type B blood, a study finds. People with type A or AB blood face a risk that falls somewhere in between, researchers report in the March 18 Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Research suggesting that blood type might influence cancer risk first emerged in the 1950s, and the idea has puzzled scientists ever since.

Because testing blood type was relatively easy to do even then, scientists did it, says study coauthor Brian Wolpin, an oncologist and epidemiologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in Boston. But reports over the past half-century have offered a mixed bag--some suggest blood type matters in cancer and others indicate it doesn't.

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Climate Researchers Seek Citizen Scientists
from the Seattle Times

Valerie Hilt's yard brims with hollyhocks, hellebores and hyacinths. But it's her lilac bush that landed the Port Angeles great-grandmother in the annals of science. For 35 springs, Hilt has logged the date when the first leaf unfurls on the 20-foot-tall shrub. She also takes note of the first fragrant blossom and other milestones, like peak bloom.

... Hilt, 70, is one of the last remaining lilac watchers in a network that once included 2,500 volunteers across the Western U.S. Their handwritten postcards grew into a powerful database that researchers have used to document how rising temperatures are hastening the onset of spring.

Now, a national program is hoping to recruit a new corps of 100,000 citizen scientists to monitor climate impacts on the living world. This time, volunteers can gather data on a wide range of plant species, from dandelions to Douglas fir. Next year, the network will expand to include birds, bugs and other animals.

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A Medical Madoff: Anesthesiologist Faked Data in 21 Studies
from Scientific American

Over the past 12 years, anesthesiologist Scott Reuben revolutionized the way physicians provide pain relief to patients undergoing orthopedic surgery for everything from torn ligaments to worn-out hips. Now, the profession is in shambles after an investigation revealed that at least 21 of Reuben's papers were pure fiction, and that the pain drugs he touted in them may have slowed postoperative healing.

"We are talking about millions of patients worldwide, where postoperative pain management has been affected by the research findings of Dr. Reuben," says Steven Shafer, editor in chief of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia, which published 10 of Reuben's fraudulent papers.

Paul White, another editor at the journal, estimates that Reuben's studies led to the sale of billions of dollars worth of the potentially dangerous drugs known as COX2 inhibitors, Pfizer's Celebrex (celecoxib) and Merck's Vioxx (rofecoxib), for applications whose therapeutic benefits are now in question.

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Global Warming Reaches the Antarctic Abyss
from New Scientist

Even the deepest, darkest reaches of the Antarctic abyss are feeling the heat, according to new results presented at the climate change congress in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Gregory Johnson, of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, says even he was surprised by the findings. He says the changes could be responsible for up to 20% of the observed global sea-level rise.

As part of the CLIVAR project, Johnson and a team of international colleagues have been spending weeks at a time at sea, tracing straight lines across all of the world's oceans. As they make these traverses, they measure the temperatures of the water from the very bottom right up to the surface. The team takes its measurements along the same routes as expeditions carried out in the 1990s, which provides a picture of how things have changed in roughly one decade.

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Commentary: The Problem of Perception
from the Scientist (Registration Required)

There is a common perception among young students that the surest path to resolving scientific controversies is to design a clever experiment, one that will definitively resolve conflicting hypotheses. However, Steven Wiley has found that most scientific controversies do not revolve around specific experimental data, but instead are disputes over data interpretation.

Data interpretations depend on a scientist's underlying assumptions and worldview. For example, a molecular biologist might think of protein expression as an outcome of mRNA levels, whereas a biochemist might think in terms of synthetic and degradation rates. Both are right, of course, but each might expect different reasons for a change in the amount of a protein.

"Our perspective and assumptions regarding how living systems work defines us as biologists, which is why arguments over interpretations can get so nasty," he says. "If another scientist disputes the validity of your viewpoint, it can impact your reputation as well as your ego."

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Tests Could Detect Ovarian Cancer Early
from the Baltimore Sun

LONDON (Associated Press)--Doctors screening women for ovarian cancer were able to pick up the disease about two years earlier than normal, according to a British study published Wednesday.

Scientists have long searched for a way to identify ovarian cancer early. [The disease] kills nearly 100,000 women worldwide every year. If it is found early, nearly 90 percent of women survive. However, most women are currently only diagnosed with the disease after it has spread, when there is only a maximum 30 percent chance of survival.

In the British study, doctors enrolled approximately 200,000 post-menopausal women aged 50 to 74 across the United Kingdom from 2001 to 2005. About 100,000 of those women received no screening tests.

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'Peking Man' Older Than Thought
from BBC News Online

Iconic ancient human fossils from China are 200,000 years older than had previously been thought, a study shows. The new dating analysis suggests the "Peking Man" fossils, unearthed in the caves of Zhoukoudian are some 750,000 years old.

The discovery should help define a more accurate timeline for early humans arriving in North-East Asia. A US-Chinese team of researchers has published its findings in the prestigious journal Nature.

The cave system of Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, is one of the most important Palaeolithic sites in the world. Between 1921 and 1966, archaeologists working at the site unearthed tens of thousands of stone tools and hundreds of fragmentary remains from about 40 early humans.

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[Kai]

March 11, 2009



EPA Plans U.S. Registry of Greenhouse Gas Emissions
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to establish a nationwide system for reporting greenhouse gas emissions, a program that could serve as the basis for a federal cap on the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming.

The registry plan, which was announced yesterday, would cover about 13,000 facilities that account for 85 to 90 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas output. It was drafted under the Bush administration but stalled after the Office of Management and Budget objected to it because the EPA based the rule on its powers under the Clean Air Act.

"Our efforts to confront climate change must be guided by the best possible information," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson in a statement. "Through this new reporting, we will have comprehensive and accurate data about the production of greenhouse gases. This is a critical step toward helping us better protect our health and environment--all without placing an onerous burden on our nation's small businesses."

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Genetic Tests May Reveal Source of Mystery Tumors
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

When Jo Symons was found to have cancer, there was an extra complication: doctors could not tell what type of cancer she had. Tumors were found in her neck, chest and lymph nodes. But those tumors had spread there from someplace else, and her doctors could not determine whether the original site was the breast, the colon, the ovary or some other organ. Without that knowledge, they could not offer optimal treatment.

Such mystery tumors are estimated to account for 2 percent to 5 percent of all cancer, or at least 30,000 new cases a year in the United States, making them more common than brain, liver or stomach cancers. For patients, such a diagnosis can amount to a double agony--not only do they have cancer, but doctors cannot treat it properly.

But now 21st-century medicine may help. New genetic tests may pinpoint the origin of the mystery tumors. The tests, which cost more than $3,000 each, still need to prove their worth better, experts say, though some of them are hopeful.

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Top 10 Myths about Sustainability
from Scientific American

When a word becomes so popular you begin hearing it everywhere, in all sorts of marginally related or even unrelated contexts, it means one of two things. Either the word has devolved into a meaningless cliché, or it has real conceptual heft. "Green" (or, even worse, "going green") falls squarely into the first category. But "sustainable," which at first conjures up a similarly vague sense of environmental virtue, actually belongs in the second.

True, you hear it applied to everything from cars to agriculture to economics. But that's because the concept of sustainability is at its heart so simple that it legitimately applies to all these areas and more.

Despite its simplicity, however, sustainability is a concept people have a hard time wrapping their minds around. To help, Scientific American Earth 3.0 has consulted with several experts on the topic to find out what kinds of misconceptions they most often encounter. The result is a take on the top 10 myths about sustainability.

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Zapotec Digs in Mexico Show Clues to Rise and Fall
from National Geographic News

When it comes to pre-Columbian civilizations, the Aztec and Maya--known for their spectacular pyramids and temples, hieroglyphic writing systems, and elaborate, violent rituals--often overshadow the Zapotec, their less familiar counterparts centered in southern Mexico.

But the Zapotec also played a vital role in ancient Mesoamerica, and archaeologists are seeking new clues to the rise and fall of their culture and civilization, which flourished and declined in the Valley of Oaxaca at roughly the same time as the ancient Maya.

For 1,500 years, the agrarian Zapotec state spanned 800 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) and was home to at least 100,000 people. The Zapotec were pioneers in the use of agriculture and writing systems. They were gifted weavers and ceramic artisans. They built Monte Albán, one of the earliest cities in the Americas, and established a remarkably organized bureaucratic structure. But their state collapsed, and no one is exactly sure why.

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Scientists Cheer Obama's Stem Cell Reversal
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

SAN FRANCISCO (Associated Press)--Scientists are cheering President Barack Obama's lifting of federal funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, hopeful the move will open the financial floodgates to speed new treatments.

"It's wonderful. We are elated," said Jan Nolta, who directs the stem cell research program at the University of California at Davis. "Now that we can use the federal funds, it will just go so much more quickly."

Directors of university programs in stem cell research said that money would mean more jobs at labs, especially for students just starting their careers. Researchers and biotech entrepreneurs also expect more work. ... Though most federal grants go to academic researchers, biotech industry backers said the rule changes also could mean a windfall for private companies.

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Single Top Quark Detected
from Science News

Physicists have identified the production of the elusive single top quark, two research teams report.

Previously top quarks have been observed only when produced in pairs, as when they were initially discovered 14 years ago at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. Now, researchers using Fermilab's two detectors announced March 9 that they have detected single top quarks. The techniques used to find the singleton quarks could help to identify other rare particles, such as the Higgs boson, the scientists say.

... Quarks are fundamental particles of matter that come in six varieties known as "flavors." Ordinary matter consists mostly of two quark flavors, the "up" and "down" quarks that make up protons and neutrons. Other quarks are found in exotic subatomic particles or are created in high-energy collisions in particle accelerators. The top quark was the last flavor to be discovered experimentally, in 1995.

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Rebuilding Greensburg Green
from Smithsonian Magazine

... Like most small Midwestern towns, Greensburg, Kansas, had been losing jobs, entertainment, and population--especially young people, with the school population cut in half in recent decades. According to [Darin] Headrick, "we were probably destined to the same outcome every other small rural town is, and that is, you're going to dry up and blow away."

Why bother rebuilding [after a devastating tornado]? "We thought: What can we do that gives our community the best chance to survive in the long term? What would make people want to move to our community?"

No one is sure who first voiced the green idea, because it occurred to many people simultaneously. They could leave to start over elsewhere, they could rebuild as before only to watch their town slowly die--or, as Bob Dixson, who has since become mayor, says, "we could rebuild in a green, energy-efficient manner that would leave a legacy to future generations." As the conversation gained momentum, the people became excited with their unique opportunity to start from scratch, to live up to their town's name--and perhaps to run an experiment that could lead others into greenness by proving its value.

http://snipr.com/dlbb7



Top Prize in Computing Goes to MIT Professor
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Barbara Liskov, a veteran Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who created building blocks for software programming languages that were key to personal computers and the Internet, was named Tuesday the winner of the 2008 A.M. Turing Award, the most prestigious prize in computer science.

The award, known in technology circles as the Nobel Prize of computing, is named for legendary British mathematician Alan Turing, who helped the Allies break German naval codes during World War II. It will be presented to Liskov by the Association for Computing Machinery, a scientific society, at a conference in San Diego in June.

Liskov, 69, an institute professor and associate provost at MIT, is being honored for her innovations in "building the pervasive computer system designs that power daily life," the association said in a statement set to be released today. "Her achievements in programming language design have made software more reliable and easier to maintain."

http://snipr.com/dlbdj



Cosmic Strings Could Solve Positron Mystery
from Nature News

A network of 'cosmic strings' criss-crossing the Universe could be responsible for a mysterious flux of antimatter particles which has been puzzling astronomers.

Theoretical astrophysicists have long proposed the existence of cosmic strings, thinner than an atom yet stretching vast distances across the Universe. They are thought to have formed in events known as 'phase transitions'--dramatic shifts in the structure of matter that took place as the Universe cooled down shortly after the Big Bang. These strings would have strong gravitational fields, and could have helped to gather the matter that formed the first galaxies.

The idea fell from favour when detailed observations seemed to prove that strings alone could not account for galactic formation. ... But now, theoretical astrophysicist Tanmay Vachaspati at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, suggests that space may be threaded instead with a network of much lighter strings--too lightweight to be directly responsible for galaxy formation--that could have formed during phase transitions in the Universe's unseen dark matter.

http://snipr.com/dlbfy



Sea Rise 'to Exceed Projections'
from BBC News Online

The global sea level looks set to rise far higher than forecast because of changes in the polar ice-sheets, a team of researchers has suggested. Scientists at a climate change summit in Copenhagen said earlier UN estimates were too low and that sea levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100.

The projections did not include the potential impact of polar melting and ice breaking off, they added. The implications for millions of people would be "severe," they warned. Ten percent of the world's population--about 600 million people--live in low-lying areas.

Professor Konrad Steffen from the University of Colorado, speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, highlighted new studies into ice loss in Greenland, showing it has accelerated over the last decade.

http://snipr.com/dlbjs

[Thurnez Isa]

March 17, 2009



North America's Smallest Dino Predator
from Science News

Paleontologists rummaging through museum drawers in Canada have discovered the remains of North America's smallest carnivorous dinosaur--a theropod about the size of a chicken.

The first fossils of the 1.9-kilogram Hesperonychus elizabethae, which lived about 75 million years ago, were actually unearthed in southern Alberta in 1982, says Nicholas Longrich, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Calgary in Canada.

But they lay forgotten and unstudied until Longrich and colleague Phil Currie of the University of Alberta in Edmonton rediscovered them, along with the fragmentary remains of several other specimens, the team reports online March 16 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

http://snipr.com/dztof

here's what a CTV artist thinks it looks like



it sooo cute
I want one

[Kai]

March 10, 2009




Scientists Learning to Target Bacteria Where They Live
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

CHICAGO--In the arms race between humans and bacteria, the ability to form "biofilms"--large aggregations of microbes embedded in a slimy matrix--has been one of the weapons the organisms use to defeat the immune system, antibiotic drugs and other threats. But scientists, who only recently recognized the role that biofilms play in antibiotic resistance, may be closing in on promising prospects for defeating pathogens.

Scientists have learned that bacteria that are vulnerable when floating around as individual cells in what is known as their "planktonic state" are much tougher to combat once they get established in a suitable place--whether the hull of a ship or inside the lungs--and come together in tightly bound biofilms.

In that state, they can activate mechanisms like tiny pumps to expel antibiotics, share genes that confer protection against drugs, slow down their metabolism or become dormant, making them harder to kill. The answer, say researchers, is to find substances that will break up biofilms.

http://snipr.com/diuof



Study Finds Plenty of Apparent Plagiarism
from Science News

If copying is the sincerest form of flattery, then journals are publishing a lot of amazingly flattering science. Of course to most of us, the authors of such reports would best be labeled plagiarists--and warrant censure, not praise.

But Harold R. Garner and his colleagues at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas aren't calling anybody names. They're just posting a large and growing bunch of research papers--pairs of them--onto the Internet and highlighting patches in each that are identical.

Says Garner: "We're pointing out possible plagiarism. You be the judge." But this physicist notes that in terms of wrong-doing, authors of the newest paper in most pairs certainly appear to have been "caught with their hands in the cookie jar."

http://snipr.com/diuqh



News Analysis: Rethink Stem Cells? Science Already Has
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

With soaring oratory, President Obama on Monday removed a substantial practical nuisance that has long made life difficult for stem cell researchers. He freed biomedical researchers using federal money (a vast majority) to work on more than the small number of human embryonic stem cell lines that were established before Aug. 9, 2001.

In practical terms, federally financed researchers will now find it easier to do a particular category of stem cell experiments that, though still important, has been somewhat eclipsed by new advances.

Until now, to study unapproved stem cell lines, researchers had to set up separate, privately financed labs and follow laborious accounting procedures to make sure not a cent of federal grant money was used on that research. No longer. The lifting of such requirements "is just a major boon for the research here and elsewhere," said Dr. Arnold Kriegstein, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

http://snipr.com/diusn



Zoo Chimp 'Planned' Stone Attacks
from BBC News Online

A male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on zoo visitors, according to researchers. Keepers at Furuvik Zoo found that the chimp collected and stored stones that he would later use as missiles.

Further, the chimp learned to recognise how and when parts of his concrete enclosure could be pulled apart to fashion further projectiles. The findings are reported in the journal Current Biology.

There has been scant evidence in previous research that animals can plan for future events. Crucial to the current study is the fact that Santino, a chimpanzee at the zoo in the city north of Stockholm, collected the stones in a calm state, prior to the zoo opening in the morning. The launching of the stones occurred hours later--during dominance displays to zoo visitors--with Santino in an "agitated" state.

http://snipr.com/diuup



Does Eating Fewer Calories Improve the Brain?
from Scientific American

Hara hatchi bu, the Okinawan people's habit of eating only till they are 80 percent full, is thought to be one of the secrets of their extraordinary health and longevity. In addition to one of the highest percentages of people in the world who live past 100, Okinawans appear to be less prone to heart disease, diabetes and obesity.

Indeed, ever since it was discovered in the 1930s that laboratory rats fed a caloric-restricted (CR) diet lived almost twice as long as their well fed counterparts, scientists have pursued caloric restriction research in the hopes of finding novel strategies for extending human life and preventing disease.

Given the growing older population at risk for memory problems and the rising rates of obesity, the role of diet in maintaining peak brain performance has taken on added importance.

http://snipr.com/diuyc



Fish Story: Novel Study Shows Trophy Reef Catch Reduced to Small Fry
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

The photo was taken in 1957, but most of the creatures depicted appear almost primordial sea monsters from a forgotten time. They are impossibly large fish, strung heavily beneath a sign advertising "All Day Deep Sea Fishing" in the Florida Keys.

... "I swear that one of the groupers (in the photo) was almost the size of a cow, and on that trip, two customers caught what looks like a couple of tons of fish, maybe even three tons," said Paul Dayton, a biological oceanographer at UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "All of the fish were huge."


Fast forward half a century to 2007; same dock, different world. Sport fishermen still venture out into the waters surrounding the Keys daily in search of sea monsters, but they return with fish more akin to guppies--that is, if they return with any fish at all. In a novel and visually dramatic study, Loren McClenachan, a marine biologist and graduate student at Scripps, has documented how much marine life has changed in the Florida Keys and, by extrapolation, almost everywhere else in the world.

http://snipr.com/div02



Harvard Fuels Quest to Create Life from Scratch
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)

Harvard scientists have created a biological machine in the lab that manufactures proteins, mimicking the activity of a cellular structure, called a ribosome, that is critical for life.

If it is verified by other scientists, the work by Harvard Medical School professor George Church would be an important step in the quest to create life from scratch.

"The reason it's a step toward artificial life is that the key component of all living systems--the one component that's basically shared by all living systems--is the ribosome," Church said in an interview Friday. "If you're going to make synthetic life that's anything like current life ... you've got to have this highly conserved, highly complicated biological machine."

http://snipr.com/div1z



Depression Increases Heart Risks in Seemingly Healthy Women
from the Chicago Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--Severe depression may silently break a seemingly healthy woman's heart.

Doctors have long known that depression is common after a heart attack or stroke, and worsens those people's outcomes. Monday, Columbia University researchers reported new evidence that depression can lead to heart disease in the first place.

The scientists tracked 63,000 women from the long-running Nurses' Health Study between 1992 and 2004. None had signs of heart disease when the study began, but nearly 8 percent had evidence of serious depression. The depressed women were more than twice as likely to experience sudden cardiac death ... concluded the 12-year study, published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. They also had a smaller increased risk of death from other forms of heart disease.

http://snipr.com/div3e



They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Emanuel Derman expected to feel a letdown when he left particle physics for a job on Wall Street in 1985.

After all, for almost 20 years, as a graduate student at Columbia and a postdoctoral fellow at institutions like Oxford and the University of Colorado, he had been a spear carrier in the quest to unify the forces of nature and establish the elusive and Einsteinian "theory of everything," hobnobbing with Nobel laureates and other distinguished thinkers. How could managing money compare? But the letdown never happened. Instead he fell in love with a corner of finance that dealt with stock options.

"Options theory is kind of deep in some way. It was very elegant; it had the quality of physics," Dr. Derman explained recently with a tinge of wistfulness, sitting in his office at Columbia, where he is now a professor of finance and a risk management consultant with Prisma Capital Partners. Dr. Derman, who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs and became managing director, was a forerunner of the many physicists and other scientists who have flooded Wall Street in recent years ...

http://snipr.com/div53



FDA Seeks Help to Develop Rapid Test for Salmonella
from the Minneapolis Star Tribune (Registration Required)

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)-Wanted: Salmonella detector. Must work fast. Send plans and specifications to Uncle Sam, care of the Food and Drug Administration.

Frustrated that conventional lab methods can now take as long as nine days to identify the most common of food bugs, the FDA is searching for a rapid test for salmonella. Two recent outbreaks--one involving peanut butter, the other blamed on tomatoes and hot peppers--have put the agency on the spot.

Each time the FDA had pieces of the puzzle, but it took a while to fill in the complete picture. The uncertainty made consumers nervous about eating everyday foods. Food producers lost millions in forgone sales and recalled products. Lawmakers fumed. One congressman likened the government's disease detectives to the Keystone Kops. Since other outbreaks are likely to happen, FDA officials are desperately seeking anything that would make their response more efficient.

http://snipr.com/div79




SORRY about all the dumping. My adviser just got out of the hospital. Docs say he'll live. Hes been going through back logged email

[Honey]

Thank you Kai, I appreciate being able to read these.  (Glad your advisor is gonna be ok too.)

[Kai]

March 24, 2009



Exxon Valdez 20 Years Later: Oil Still Remains
from National Geographic News

Two decades after the worst oil spill in U.S. history, huge quantities of oil still coat Alaska's shores with a toxic glaze, experts say.

More than 21,000 gallons of crude oil remain of the 11 million gallons of crude oil that bled from the stranded tanker Exxon Valdez on the night of March 23, 1989.

The oil--which has been detected as far as 450 miles away from the spill site in Prince William Sound--continues to harm wildlife and the livelihoods of local people, according to conservation groups.

http://snipr.com/egiur



Space Storm Alert: 90 Seconds from Catastrophe
from New Scientist

It is midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. ... Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. ... Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event--a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

It sounds ridiculous. ... Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences in January this year claims it could do just that.

http://snipr.com/egiw2



Does Dark Energy Really Exist?
from Scientific American

In science, the grandest revolutions are often triggered by the smallest discrepancies. ... In our own era, a revolution began to unfold 11 years ago with the discovery of the accelerating universe. A tiny deviation in the brightness of exploding stars led astronomers to conclude that they had no idea what 70 percent of the cosmos consists of.

All they could tell was that space is filled with a substance unlike any other one that pushes along the expansion of the universe rather than holding it back. This substance became known as dark energy.

It is now over a decade later, and the existence of dark energy is still so puzzling that some cosmologists are revisiting the fundamental postulates that led them to deduce its existence in the first place.

http://snipr.com/egixx



What's So Hot About Chili Peppers?
from Smithsonian Magazine

... A wiry 40-year-old ecologist at the University of Washington, [Joshua] Tewksbury is ... looking for a wild chili with a juicy red berry and a tiny flower: Capsicum minutiflorum. He hopes it'll help answer the hottest question in botany: Why are chilies spicy?

Bolivia is believed to be the chili's motherland, home to dozens of wild species that may be the ancestors of all the world's chili varieties--from the mild bell pepper to the medium jalapeño to the rough-skinned naga jolokia, the hottest pepper ever tested.

The heat-generating compound in chilies, capsaicin, has long been known to affect taste buds, nerve cells and nasal membranes (it puts the sting in pepper spray). But its function in wild chili plants has been mysterious.

http://snipr.com/egj0q



Never Mind the Pollock 'Fractals'
from Science News

PITTSBURGH--A proposed method for authenticating artist Jackson Pollock's drip paintings does not hold up under scrutiny, a new analysis finds.

What's more, the analysis uncovered a new way to identify a mathematical fractal, Katherine Jones-Smith of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland reported March 19 at a meeting of the American Physical Society.

A cache of 32 paintings discovered in 2003--claimed by some to be authentic Pollocks--sparked a controversy among art historians and soon brought physicists into the quagmire in an effort to identify the paintings' origins.

http://snipr.com/egj2f



Astronauts Complete Third and Final Spacewalk
from the San Diego Union-Tribune (Registration Required)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Associated Press)--Two astronauts who were teaching math and science to middle school students just five years ago went on a spacewalk together Monday, but could not free a jammed equipment shelf no matter how hard they tried.

Their path, at least, ended up clear of dangerous orbiting junk that had threatened the international space station and shuttle, and forced the joined vessels to dodge out of the way a day earlier.

Astronauts Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold II pushed and pulled the stuck equipment storage platform as hard as they could, but finally had to give up. It was unfinished business from the previous spacewalk and one of Monday's main tasks.

http://snipr.com/egj3w



Daily Red Meat Raises Chances of Dying Early
from the Washington Post (Registration Required)

Eating red meat increases the chances of dying prematurely, according to a large federal study that offers powerful new evidence that a diet that regularly includes steaks, burgers and pork chops is hazardous to your health.

The study of more than 500,000 middle-age and elderly Americans found that those who consumed the equivalent of about a small hamburger every day were more than 30 percent more likely to die during the 10 years they were followed, mostly from heart disease and cancer. Sausage, cold cuts and other processed meats also increased the risk.

Previous research had found a link between red meat and an increased risk of heart disease and cancer, particularly colorectal cancer, but the new study is the first large examination of the relationship between eating meat and overall mortality.

http://snipr.com/egj5p



Cold Fusion Debate Heats Up Again
from BBC News Online

The long-standing debate about cold fusion is receiving new impetus at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in the US this week. Cold fusion, first announced 20 years ago on Monday, was claimed to be a boundless source of clean energy by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons.

Attempts to replicate their experiments failed, but a number of researchers insist that cold fusion is possible. The meeting will see several approaches that claim to produce fusion power.

The American Chemical Society has organised sessions surrounding the research at its meetings before, suggesting that the field would otherwise have no suitable forum for debate.

http://snipr.com/egj6y



Extravagant Results of Nature's Arms Race
from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Nature is reputed to be red in tooth and claw, but many arms races across the animal kingdom are characterized by restraint rather than carnage.

Competition among males is often expressed in the form of elaborate weapons made of bone, horn or chitin. The weapons often start off small and then, under the pressure of competition, may evolve to attain gigantic proportions.

... In a new review of sexual selection, a special form of natural selection that leads to outlandish armament and decoration, Douglas J. Emlen, a biologist at the University of Montana, has assembled ideas on the evolutionary forces that have made animal weapons so diverse.

http://snipr.com/egj84



Seeking Tailored Care for Advanced Prostate Cancer
from the Seattle Times

WASHINGTON (Associated Press)--Prostate cancer has been left behind in the race for personalized medicine but that may be changing: Doctors are starting to attempt gene-guided treatment for men with advanced disease.

It's an approach already offered in treating breast and certain other cancers. The new prostate work is a small initial step at catching up. And it targets the men in most dire need--those whose prostate cancer has spread to the bones or other parts of the body, and hormone treatment to slow its march has quit working.

These are the men who ultimately wind up dying of prostate cancer, some 28,000 a year. "Prostate cancer has learned some tricks," says Dr. Phillip Febbo of Duke University Medical Center, who is unraveling how to decode those tricks to better direct therapy--by looking directly at the tumor's genetic signature.

http://snipr.com/egj9a

[Kai]

'Consciousness Signature' Discovered Spanning the Brain
from New Scientist

Electrodes implanted in the brains of people with epilepsy might have resolved an ancient question about consciousness.

Signals from the electrodes seem to show that consciousness arises from the coordinated activity of the entire brain. The signals also take us closer to finding an objective "consciousness signature" that could be used to probe the process in animals and people with brain damage without inserting electrodes.

Previously it wasn't clear whether a dedicated brain area, or "seat of consciousness", was responsible for guiding our subjective view of the world, or whether consciousness was the result of concerted activity across the whole brain.

http://snipr.com/e2fge

EMERGENCE.

[Kai]

wait, wtf?

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Previously it wasn't clear whether a dedicated brain area, or "seat of consciousness", was responsible for guiding our subjective view of the world

Wait, wut?

[Kai]

Previously it wasn't clear whether a dedicated brain area, or "seat of consciousness", was responsible for guiding our subjective view of the world

Wait, wut?

Yeah, apparently most neurobiologists were under the impression that consciousness is from a particular brain area. I've been under the impression that consciousness encompases all of the neurons throughout the body, so this is a nice confirmation for me.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Previously it wasn't clear whether a dedicated brain area, or "seat of consciousness", was responsible for guiding our subjective view of the world

Wait, wut?

Yeah, apparently most neurobiologists were total fucking idiots. I've been under the impression that consciousness can happen through something other than pixie dust and the power of love, so this is a nice confirmation for me.

Fixed.

[Iason Ouabache]

  I can't wait to see Michael Egnor-ant's reaction to that one.  I'm sure it will just be deny... deny.. deny.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

New aphrodesiac found in bacon

Today, the market for sexual enchancement supplements is dominated by Viagra and similar artificially produced pharmaceuticals, but tomorrow, it could be dominated by bacon.
Source